by J. Thorn
His bones turned to air and his eyes clamped shut but still he saw the blackness beyond color, a black that had never existed in nature, a dark solid mass that crawled into his lungs and smothered his heart and seeped into his bloodstream.
Then the darkness eased, giving way to a mottled gray, and people walked toward him across the land of smoke and sorrow.
The Miracle Woman led them, a Moses of the damned, naked and blind and beautiful. All those shuffling behind her, the stooped, the wild-eyed, the scarred, were just as lifeless, impossible things, spirits which clung to bodies that by rights should have long been abandoned.
Freeman tried to yell at the doctor to shut off the goddamned machines and get him the hell out of there. But he knew, through some instinct older than consciousness, that this world was connected to the other, real world only by the human bridges that were subjected to SST. Those who could read minds beckoned the ones brought from the dead by Kracowski’s weird machines. Freeman was cut off from the real world until Kracowski pushed his little God buttons and made everything normal again. He was all alone now, as alone as Clint in the Italian desert scrapping for a fistful of dollars.
He shifted himself, the straps gone, the mirror gone, Thirteen gone. He found he could move as if swimming in thick water, though he could see through his own skin and he weighed a thousand pounds. His feet were lost in the strange mist that covered the deadscape like an ever-shifting skin. He tried to run but the Miracle Woman raised a hand, and though her eye sockets were torn and empty, the mouth wasn’t scary at all now. The mouth was sad.
Freeman looked past her at the pale and aimless legion. He saw the old man in the gown, the one who had shuffled past him on Freeman’s first day at Wendover and had recently walked on water. A stooped woman nodded constantly, as if her head were on a spring, gaunt fingers yanking her long hair. A thin, ebony-skinned man in coveralls bit his fingertips. One of the ghosts, a man with a broad and blank face, did a dervish dance, clumsy despite his lack of substance. He, too, wore an institutional gown.
Freeman backed away, trying to figure out the laws of this new universe, commanding his transparent flesh to run. He wasn’t breathing, but still the air tasted of ash. Behind him the smoke stretched as far as he could see, and layers of gray clouds marked the seams of the sky. He reached up and the threads of his hand mingled with the deadscape.
He was part of the deadscape.
He was one of them.
Dead.
A member of that sick and shuffling crowd, those who wore masks of pain and hopelessness and confusion. Chained to their humanity, though being human must have been the most horrible punishment ever inflicted upon them. Not even death had released them from their agony. They might have walked the deadscape for centuries, but time had no meaning here, which would make it the cruelest death sentence of all.
Could God be that cruel?
The ebony man bit off his pinky and spat it into the mist.
The dervish spun and his lips parted in a silent chant.
The Miracle Woman came nearer, her palm lifted in supplication, the torn eyeball in it staring at Freeman as if he owed her an explanation.
Freeman wanted to disappear, wanted to jump back into the real world with its ordinary despair. But his feet were part of the mist, his skin sewn into the fabric of this ethereal tapestry.
The Miracle Woman stood inches away from him, the silent ghosts looking on. She moved her hands to her face. Freeman tried not to stare at her white breasts and curves and the mysterious dark patch between her legs, and then she moved her hands away and her eyes were in her head and she blinked and smiled.
“I’m not going to hurt you,” she said. Except her lips didn’t move. This was a triptrap from the dead, and as creepy as hearing the thoughts of another human being was, it was nothing compared to the cold and sharp words that came from the Miracle Woman.
A triptrap from the dead.
And then more thoughts gushed through him, into him, a multitude of voices drove spikes through his soul. He felt their pain, he absorbed their bleak pity, he ate their psychic sickness:
“A white, white room in which to write.”
“The answers are hidden in the television.”
“I am a tree I am a tree I am a tree and I leave.”
“The voices in my head are telling me to listen.”
“Yes, doctor, I AM feeling much better, thank you.”
More voices, other phrases, scraps of broken sorrow.
And the Miracle Woman: “You don’t belong here yet.”
Freeman wanted to shout that he’d never asked to be here, he’d never volunteered to have ESP in the first place, he’d never wanted any special gifts, he just wanted to be a normal boy with a Mom and a Dad and a dog and a house that didn’t hurt and no weird games with Daddy and no experiments and no Department of Social Services and no Wendover and no Kracowski and no Trust and no more people trying to heal him when he’d never been broken in the first place, but then the voices all ran together and he knew what it was like to be insane, because the deadscape was nothing if not a land of the insane, and it certainly wasn’t nothing because he was here now and it was real and this was everything and forever and God made a place like this for people who couldn’t help themselves or maybe insane people made God and the voices in his head and the triptrap dead and yes doctor daddy daddy daddy had a white, white room in which to write I’m feeling much better now television in my tree God is an antenna is a computer is a doctor I’m feeling much better now blade in my brain and cut out the bad part and shock me doctor I’m feeling much better now leave me alone daddy daddy daddy and why are you dead Mommy—
“You don’t belong here yet.”
The Miracle Woman’s words were softer now, caressing, and the other voices faded like a radio dropped down a hole and the smoke shifted, became more solid, and the ghosts dissolved, and the Miracle Woman smiled, and the gray gave way to the darkness.
And Freeman was alone in the darkness.
How long was forever?
But just as he reached for his chest, to see if his heart was still beating, another voice reached him like a golden shaft of light.
It was Vicky, and she said, “Told you you’re not alone.”
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR
“My, how you’ve grown,” Dr. Kenneth Mills whispered to the dark-tinted window.
In the room on the other side of the glass, Freeman stared blankly at the ceiling, lips forming nonsense syllables as he struggled against the restraints. Kracowski watched Dr. Mills’s face. No protective parental instinct flickered on those intense features. The only resemblance between father and son was the wild panic in their eyes. At least Freeman had the excuse of an electric shock jarring his flesh against his skeleton.
Dr. Mills had no excuse. Unless madness was an excuse. Mills’s defense attorney had certainly used madness as a motive. So Mills had only served six years in a state psychiatric hospital, and McDonald’s people had enough pull to have him pronounced “cured” and fit for society. Even spouse mutilators were redeemable in the modern mental health care system. Kracowski wondered how Mills would fare undergoing an SST treatment.
Kracowski pulled a sheet of data from the printer and matched it against the graphs on the computer screen. Freeman’s EKG was strong, with a few aberrant spikes but nothing that would indicate serious damage. The magnetic signatures of the middle frequency ranges showed decreased amplitude, and the PET scan painted Freeman’s brain in warm colors.
“You’ve expanded my theory in dramatic fashion,” Mills said.
McDonald frowned from the corner of the lab. Kracowski pretended to study the data. Mills bent forward, his breath making a mist on the glass. The walls vibrated slightly from the machinery that created the calibrated array of electromagnetic waves.
“But your data is still unreliable,” Mills said. “You should have stuck to my ratios of magnetism to electricity. And you’ve totally ignored the s
ubjective elements of my theory. Focus on the hippocampus, where you can scramble memories before they’re even made.”
“This wasn’t part of the deal,” Kracowski said to McDonald. “I thought you were going to give me more time, not bring in somebody to meddle.”
“I didn’t hear you object when we opened our files and gave you all the research,” the agent said. “Who else would have funded you and given you access to our brave little volunteers? Unloved children don’t exactly grow on trees, you know.”
“That was the hardest part for me,” Mills said. “Finding subjects. In the end, I found it was easier to grow my own.”
In Thirteen, Freeman writhed against the canvas straps, back arched, face contorted.
“Ooh, that must have been a good one,” Mills said. “I like the way you’ve increased the voltage in your version. And that risky bilateral shock is bound to wipe out some short-term memory.”
Kracowski’s hands tightened on the sheet of paper. Synaptic Synergy Therapy was his idea. Mills had made some advances in the ESP theory, adding classic brainwashing techniques to the delight of his backers, but Kracowski saw the mistakes Mills had made. Mills counted on subjective influence, human interaction, the power of suggestion. All smoke and mirrors.
Kracowski had reduced the process to pure science. Cold numbers and waveforms and logic. Quantum thought. Truth. He’d accomplished in only two years what Mills had fumbled around with for nearly a decade.
“Dr. Mills, I’m afraid I have to disagree with you,” Kracowski said.
Mills turned from the window as if reluctant to miss Freeman’s agony but compelled to win any argument, no matter its nature. “How can you disagree with results?”
“Your work was impure. Your adherence to traditional psychiatric techniques affected your outcomes.”
“Wrong, Dr. Kracowski. The Trust wanted ESP, and I gave it to them. Freeman. The first human in the history of the world to have the gift induced through scientific means.”
“But you were only able to generate it in one patient.” Kracowski looked over Mills’s shoulder at Freeman, then glanced at the clock. “I have a dozen case histories that prove my therapy has widespread applications. For improving the overall operation of the brain, not just focusing on a single power. I’m the one who is discovering scientific proof of life after death.”
McDonald watched as if the doctors were two bugs battling in a Mason jar. He finally spoke. “You forget who your boss is. That’s a mistake you can’t afford to keep making. We decide what is proof, and we decide who is alive and who is dead.”
Mills grinned at Kracowski like a fanged jack-o’-lantern. “He’s right. He’s always been right.”
McDonald took the paper from Kracowski’s hand and scanned the data. “Nothing too unusual here.”
“How long?” Mills asked.
Kracowski checked the computer. “Ten minutes, fourteen seconds.”
“I have to confess, Dr. Kracowski, maybe you have made some advances. Under my formula, Freeman would be dead by now.”
Freeman had been lucky to survive in the first place. Mills’s experiments went too far. All because Mills relied on emotional turmoil in the subject. All because Mills needed that final shock to push Freeman over the edge. Mills’s case files on his son were filled with enough trauma to fill a dozen mental wards. And those sessions in which he force-fed his own sick thoughts into Freeman’s brain—
“Stop at eleven minutes,” McDonald said.
Kracowski rankled at the agent’s self-righteous tone. As if McDonald had even the vaguest understanding of the work. At least Mills understood that discovery was more important than the resulting effects of that discovery. McDonald only wanted something he could show his superiors, a weapon so abstract that it could never be applied toward military objectives. Knowledge had never served a positive political purpose, and wisdom had rarely intersected with knowledge, at least where political power was concerned.
“Why do you want to stop at eleven?” Mills turned back to the window, savoring the torture etched into his son’s face.
“Supposed to be a mystical number,” McDonald said.
Kracowski pressed his lips together to keep from speaking and watched the digits blink upward.
“What do you suppose he’s seeing?” Mills said.
“For his sake, I hope it’s the future and not the past,” Kracowski said.
CHAPTER THIRTY-FIVE
Not alone. Not alone. Not alone.
Freeman peered into the dwindling gloom. Vicky was in here somewhere, trapped in this same gray deadscape. Her voice came to him again.
“Triptrap, Freeman. Reach out to me.”
How could he reach with arms that were heavy as mud? The ghosts had dissolved and the darkness pressed in on all sides. He wanted to speak but his throat was clogged with black oxygen. Then he remembered he didn’t have to speak. Not out loud, anyway.
“Where are you?” he thought.
“The Green Room,” came Vicky’s voice. “They made us go to our beds.”
“I saw them. The dead people. The Miracle Woman—”
“I know. I was with you the whole time.”
“How did you do that?”
“My brain works better now. Even when I’m not in Thirteen. They must have really juiced up the machines and maybe it’s spilling over or something.”
“How am I supposed to get out of here?”
Freeman turned his head, looking for any sort of dismal sunrise in this land of midnight. He hoped he wasn’t dead. He didn’t want to spend another second in this place, much less an eternity. A hum drifted from the unseen distance, growing louder, as if a monstrous swarm of insects was approaching.
“Vicky?”
The sky broke apart and became part of the swarm. The darkness spun, the horizons narrowed, a frozen wind arose from somewhere below. Freeman shouted, but his words were lost in the surreal tornado. As he felt his body being lifted, he grabbed for the darkness that had seemed so solid only moments before.
He found himself on the cot in Thirteen. His stomach fluttered and his head throbbed. He opened his eyes to a blurred world of soft light and moving shadows. People stood around the bed, and for a moment, Freeman thought they were ghosts, and he closed his eyes again, but then someone loosened the restraints.
He heard a voice that sent an icy stake through his heart, a voice that was worse than dead, a voice that sent him shivering and made the memories spill from that dark space under the bridge.
“Hey, Trooper.”
Dad.
Freeman’s eyes snapped open as if awakening to escape a nightmare, only to find the nightmare was there in the flesh, standing at the foot of the bed.
Dad.
The goddamned troll.
Out of the loony bin.
How had he found Freeman?
No, the question wasn’t how he had found Freeman. The question was, what had taken him so long? Because Dad had promised to finish the job. After Freeman had testified in the judge’s private chambers, Dad had stood up in court and screamed at his son, frothing at the mouth as if to verify a self-diagnosis of sociopathic schizophrenia. And Freeman had known, even as a six-year-old, that Dad never lied, at least not about enjoying his only son’s pain.
“I’m going to triptrap you to death,” Dad had shouted that day six years ago, and now Dad repeated it so softly that only Freeman heard. He added, “Because we both know what really happened to your mother, don’t we?”
“What was that?” Kracowski said.
“A secret joke between Freeman and me,” Dad said. “Right, Trooper?”
“Trooper” had been Dad’s pet name for Freeman, usually used in public when Dad was pretending to be affectionate. But Freeman knew the real meaning behind the name, because Dad loved to torment him with it. Like the time he’d hooked Freeman to the machines in the closet and said, “I’m melting your brain like I melted your toy soldiers. Because you’re a troope
r. You’re going to be a soldier in a different kind of war.”
Freeman rubbed his wrists where they’d chafed against the restraints. Kracowski checked Freeman’s pulse, then shined a penlight into each of his pupils. Freeman stared back at the light, hoping it would burn him blind so he wouldn’t have to look at his father.
“No outward sign of neurological damage,” Kracowski said.
Dad pushed the doctor away. “Well, we’ve got plenty of time yet, don’t we?” He stared down at Freeman, his chin sharp, his teeth too white and narrow, his eyes bulging.
And then Dad triptrapped him, just like the old days, only Freeman was smarter now and Dad was a little out of practice, and Dad’s strange broken thoughts bounced off the shield that Freeman had thrown up, and Freeman felt a surge of triumph.
I can knock down the troll. He’s not going to eat me for his dinner.
But the euphoria died as Dad cracked the blockade and roared into his mind like a hurricane of knives. To the bystanders, Kracowski and Randy and McDonald, it probably looked like Dad was leaning down to kiss Freeman on the forehead. But Dad was really getting close so that his frontal lobe could spew its poison through the bone of Freeman’s skull. And Dad let loose as if he’d been storing up his anger for years while locked behind bars in a Dorothea Dix psychiatric unit, pretending to slowly get better, acting as if the medication was working and believing that, yes, Kenneth Mills had committed a terrible wrong, but now Kenneth was all better, and with the benevolent blessings of the government shrinks who’d pronounced him sound and sane, Kenneth Mills was now ready to pick up where he’d left off.
And ready to see just how much damage Freeman could withstand.
Dad’s words tumbled forth in fractured phrases. “How dare you . . . thought you’d escaped me, didn’t you, you little bastard? Kracowski’s trying to steal my thunder . . . but we both know I’m the only one who can control minds around here. The crazy idiots . . . babbling about spirits and the deadscape . . . hey, you really do think you saw ghosts . . . you’re a chip off the old block, aren’t you, Trooper? Madder than a headless hatter.”